Born: May 26, 1966
Known for: An on-screen persona that's sometimes waifish, always edgy.
Born and raised in Golders Green, London's quintessential Jewish neighborhood, Helena Bonham Carter is descended from old British aristocracy on her father's side, but her mother comes from an established French banking family with Austrian, Spanish and Czech flavorings. Thankfully, Bonham Carter's career has infused some new cheekiness to all of this old-world stuffiness. Her early roles in several period pieces earned her the undeniably hot nickname "The Corset Queen," but she tore her way out of that constricting pigeonhole with a vengeance in 1999's classic Fight Club, in which she played Marla Singer, a compellingly horny, thieving and apocalypse-enabling urban hipster. We're also intrigued to see her as a sci-fi villain in next year's Terminator Salvation, although there probably won't be any liquid metal corsets involved.